Several years ago, some friends and I gathered for a “holiday season party” in the days between Hanukkah and Christmas. We ate latkes. We drank eggnog. And we talked about the Maccabees. Around the table went a debate, about the Maccabees and the Hellenists in the battle for cultural supremacy in ancient Judea.
I expressed some sympathy for the Maccabees, and declared Antiochus Epiphanes to have been no saint.
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